Persistent Memory
by Alexandra Spar
Summary: Nonslash AU Frodo angst. After the destruction of the Ring, is the Ringbearer truly free? NB: Arwen has succeeded Elrond as Rivendell's ruler in this particular universe.
1. A nightmare

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(Disclaimer: I own nothing in this story except the rather predictable plot. Tolkien's estate and the guys who made the movie have all the rights to this. I'm making $0 off this deal.)

Darkness, flowing, running, billowing darkness, all around; and up ahead, drawing him closer and closer, that great scarlet eye that filled the world and roared on and on in flame, never ceasing, never blinking, never letting go.......

He stumbled, the shards of rock cutting into his hands and knees as he fell, and picked himself up again—even though he knew he was running to his death, he couldn't fight the pull of that horrible burning eye any more than he could wear a ring on the third finger of his right hand......and in a way it was almost a relief to know that he would soon be in those flames, that the awful pulling would cease, that all the memories and all the pain and voices in the darkness of his head would go away........

Frodo sat bolt upright, gasping, his nightshirt plastered to his body with cold sweat. The place where his finger had been was aching again—_phantom pain_, they had called it—and he could feel the old scars of the Ringwraith's blade and of Shelob's sting throb with every heartbeat. 

The dream again. Shivering, he slipped out of bed, padded over to the window. Outside, the moon poured benign silver over the Shire; trees and hedges dreamed in the pale light, the distant mountains slept at peace. _I've seen those mountains close up_, Frodo thought tiredly. _I've walked through them. I've seen Orodruin collapse._

And he hadn't slept one full night through in almost a month now, without the dream. He couldn't ask anyone about it—Sam would worry needlessly and be completely useless, the other hobbits would nod wisely and remark that young Frodo had never been quite right in the head since all that nasty business with that ring. The only ones who might understand even a little were the Elves, and he couldn't see mounting an expedition to Rivendell to ask them about his nightmares.

He rested his aching head against the cool glass. The others would be right; he _had_ never been quite the same, not after what he had seen, what he had done. Thing was—he'd thought it was over, once the Ring had returned to its fiery birthplace and the shadow blown away on the morning wind—he'd thought he could, eventually, learn to live a normal life again. That there wouldn't be any more quests, any more pitched battles, any more nights huddled by a banked earth-fire in the lee of crumbled monuments. After all—who was there left to fight?

But he couldn't help it; he knew something else was wrong. The twisted white scars told him something was on the wing again, something was about to happen; he carried that knowledge in his blood, like the poison from the Ringwraith's blade. He was no longer quite mortal, anymore.

He ran his hands through his hair, tangling the curls even further, not noticing the pain. It would go away. It had to go away. He had finished his adventuring for good, nightmare or no nightmare. And the tightness he'd been feeling in his chest was nothing more than good old-fashioned fear. It would go away once the nightmare passed, he was sure of it.

Nevertheless, he spent the rest of that night, like so many others, curled on the windowledge watching the moonshadows move across the grass. Now and then a little cough would shake him, just a shivering of his shoulders, a catch in the light rhythm of his breath. He was thinking of the way he'd felt when he'd learned of his parents' death, and not quite understanding why.

**

The hall of Rivendell was hung with sprays of the fragrant late rose, pale creamy petals bright against the old wood. The celebration of summer's end was a solemn occasion, but perhaps not solemn enough to explain the preoccupied look on the face of the elflady Arwen as she sat at the high windows at the end of the hall. No one approached her; they knew better. She, like Frodo many miles away, was remembering the flickering running darkness and the scream of the Black Riders.

Abruptly Arwen rose and stalked to a smaller chamber locked and bolted from general access. The mithril bolts slid back at a look, and she stepped inside. 

A _palantir_—the last of the seeingstones—hung gently in the air above a blondwood pedestal. Unlike the thing Saruman had cherished in his tower, Arwen's _palantir_ glowed a gentle silver, swirling like clouds in a distant sky, and the air around it failed to crackle with leashed hostility. The elf tucked an errant strand of dark hair behind one ear and bent over the crystal, letting the field around it change with the power she was channeling.

A moment later she was running down the hallway to the cloister where the elven elders gathered, all thoughts of roses and autumn forgotten in her haste.

**

"Mr Frodo......?"

Frodo looked up from the map; Sam's face was blocking the light from the window, haloed by honeysuckle he should have been industriously cutting back. "Mr. Frodo....are you all right, sir?"

"I'm fine, Sam." He was wearing, over his shirt and waistcoat, a tattered brown coat that had seen better days—better days on a long and winding road—whose rents had been neatly mended with contrasting thread. It was, however, warm enough for Sam, outside, to have stripped to the waist.

"That's good," said Sam, "but if you don't mind my saying so, you look a little peaky, sir."

Frodo sighed and manufactured a smile. "I haven't been sleeping well," he said, sounding unconcerned. "Go on, Sam, that honeysuckle needs attention."

His friend gave him a searching look, but nodded and disappeared from view. A moment later the bushes began to shake and thrash as he attacked them with the pruning shears.

Frodo got up, pulling the coat tighter around himself, shivering. The eye kept getting closer, in the dream. Close enough to touch. He thought that in another few days he would probably reach it. Coughing, he wandered back into the living room of Bag End, knelt down by the fireplace and put on another chunk of applewood. It was funny how cold it seemed inside on a day like this.

As he had been doing more and more as the dream got worse, his hand strayed to the white gem he wore on a thin chain around his neck; its comforting hardness bit into his palm. For a moment he felt stiflingly hot in his layers of clothing, but then the strange insidious chill crept into him again, the tightness in his chest returned.

_I won't go to the Elves. I _won't._This is just........nerves, or something. We destroyed the Ring. There is no Eye of Sauron any more._

Then why is it getting harder and harder to breathe? he asked himself sourly. 

_Nerves. They're right, I've never been quite right in the head since that first moment when I touched the Ring. It did for Bilbo—Elbereth's eyes, the _ferocity_of him when he demanded it from me at Rivendell.......and it's done for me. I'll be jumping at shadows as long as I live._

He leaned on the mantelpiece as another fit of coughing shook him. _It's never going to let me go. I know it won't. I'll miss it forever._

Ah, but forever may not actually be all that long now, he answered himself. _You're getting closer to the Eye._

And he was; that night he only just managed to wake, gasping and coughing, before he fell into the fire of the Eye itself. He'd been close enough for the heat of its flames to bring out a sudden fierce sweat on his face—close enough for the roaring of whatever unholy fuel fed that fire to deafen him. He could have reached out and sunk his arm to the shoulder in the flames. _He's already got one finger,_ he thought dizzily, gasping in the still night air, _why not give him the rest of that hand?_ The calm night air caught in his chest, doubling him over in a helpless fit of coughing. He curled up on his side, burying his face in the pillows, trying to muffle the awful choking sounds. 

It was a long time before he could sleep again, and when he did he was chased through burning darkness by things with too many teeth, and iron bands were tightening around his ribs.

**

Arwen sat in the high carven throne of her father and raked her gaze around the circle of elflords. For thousands of man's years these lords had sat in council as they did today, and pondered problems far greater than that which she had placed before them; but nevertheless each pointed, pallid face looked back at her with fear and urgency. 

"Are you sure of this, my lady?" one of them asked. His quiet voice made Arwen jump.

"As certain as the _palantir_ can make me," she told him quietly. "The Ringbearer yet holds some of the Ring's poison in his body. It......is growing, my lords. It is growing fast."

"And the danger?"

"Is great. For him.......it will consume him like a fire consumes a branch, if it is not stopped. For the rest of Middle-earth...it is a doorway back into the world, if Sauron can open it." Arwen stopped, looked firmly at her hands. "We do not have much time."

"Does the Ringbearer know of his danger?"

Arwen closed her eyes for a moment. "I do not believe so," she said softly. "He is......afraid, yes, but he does not know the full extent of what he has to fear."

"Yet," said another elflord, "is there really a need for us to interfere? The hobbit is but a mortal-----mostly a mortal. He has survived much, but he is tired now, and weak, and Sauron's influence burns his bones with fever. Surely this........will run its course."

There was silence in the hall for the space of a heartbeat; then Arwen was on her feet. "You must not dare, Lord Valas," she hissed, "_for shame_.......this hobbit has shown more courage and more strength in a matter of months than you have done in all your long life. The House of Elrond will not desert him now."

Valas had the grace to look embarrassed, and bowed his head. Arwen's flashing gaze ran around the circle of faces. "Are there any further objections?" she demanded. "Who will ride with me to the Shire?"

"My lady," said another elflord, younger than Valas and still bearing the faint air of wildness that the forest elves wore like perfume, "......you mean to go in person?"

"Yes," said Arwen simply.

"But...you must not leave Rivendell, leave the Last Homely House......"

"Do not tell me what I may not do."

"Your father....." began a third lord. Arwen sighed, and for a moment everyone watching her was aware of how weary she was, how bone-shakingly tired. 

"I am not my father, and I do not rule as he did. We ride out tonight, I and whoever follows me."

**

Sam found him late in the morning, huddled in a little heap by the windows. His face and throat were sheened with sweat, although the air was chilly with the first hints of autumn; his breath came in shallow gasps, and he moaned a little as Sam frantically gathered him up and carried him to the bed. His maimed hand was clutching the white gem around his neck; when Sam finally unwound his fingers from the jewel he found that its facets had cut slashes in Frodo's palm. Numb with horror, he found some water and a cloth and began to bathe Frodo's face, trying to wake him.

It seemed like hours before his lashes fluttered and parted, and he blinked up at Sam with eyes so dilated from pain that only a thin ring of blue had escaped the black. "....Sam?" he croaked.

"Hush, Mr Frodo, you're not well," Sam murmured, wringing out the cloth and replacing it on Frodo's forehead. "I knew you was ill when I saw you the other day. How long has this been going on?"

Frodo coughed wrackingly. "I......don't know," he managed. "The dream......I'm running toward the Eye, Sam.......it's awfully close now....."

Sam went cold all over. "Let me get you something for that cough, Mr Frodo," he said, trying to keep his voice level, and hurried out to the little low-ceilinged kitchen. As he put on a kettle and searched in the cupboards for the herbs he needed, he ran over the same stretch of ground in his mind, over and over. _We watched Mount Doom fall. We watched it, him and I, and we came home again, and it was _over_. Now.......I'm no doctor, but I've only ever seen Mr Frodo this bad twice before....and that was when he'd been hurt by the Dark Lord's things.....and that gem he wears.....he was holding on to it like a lifeline........_

How can it be back? How can it?

But Sam couldn't think of any other explanation.

He carried a steaming beaker back to Frodo's room and helped him drink, trying not to notice the sick heat of him through the cotton nightshirt, trying not to think about it. Frodo got about half the beaker down before another coughing fit attacked him; it sounded so horrible Sam half expected to see blood and shreds of tissue on the handkerchief he was holding, but it stayed blessedly white. Eventually the cough let Frodo go, and he collapsed back against the pillows, exhausted.

"Don't leave me, Mr Frodo," Sam said, sternly. "Don't you leave me."

Frodo's eyes were open a slit, glittering. "........I don't mean to," he managed, and then he gave a little sigh and went limp.

Sam's heart jerked and fluttered until he found the slow, steady lifebeat in Frodo's wrist. He sat there for a long moment before getting to his feet, feeling old and achy, and pacing.

He might not have noticed the dim blue glow from the depths of the wardrobe, but Frodo had been rummaging around in there and left the doors partway open, and Sam's gaze happened to fall on that corner of the room as he paced. He stopped short when he saw the light, and approached the wardrobe as if it held a giant spider poised to spring, but slowly opened the door. As the pale blue light fell across Frodo's bed, the sick hobbit jerked and gasped in pain.

Sam frowned deeper and reached into the wardrobe. His fingers found the plain hilt of the elvish dagger Frodo, and Bilbo before him, had carried into battle. _Sting_. _It glows when evil is near._ Sam remembered that blue glow lighting their faces as they waited in the darkness for the orcs to attack, in more dark holes under the earth than he wanted to remember. And it was glowing now.

Sam pulled Sting out of the wardrobe and held the blade up—a long slim silver blade with indecipherable Elvish script carved into the metal—and turned to Frodo's bed. The blue glow of the blade intensified perceptibly, and Frodo tossed uneasily against the pillows.

_This isn't good at all_.

Sam shoved Sting back into its scabbard and buried the dagger underneath a pile of clothes before turning back to Frodo and taking his master's maimed hand. "It isn't fair," he muttered. "You've done so much. For so long."

Frodo's fingers twitched and curled around Sam's. He sat there for the rest of the day, not moving, as their shadows swung across the floor. 

to be continued......


	2. and a legend

Disclaimer as for 1: i own nothing 'cept the plot. no money is being made and no copyright infringement is intended. I can spell infringement. Oh, and for clarification, in this universe:

1) Elrond has gone happily off to the Tir n'an Og, or wherever it is that Elves go when they cross the sea, and left his House to Arwen, who is alive and well. I dunno why. I just kind of like Arwen.

2) Aragorn is doing his Heir-of-Elendil Rightful High King bit off in Gondor or Rohan or somewhere and is not connected with Arwen. Maybe they send each other Christmas cards.

3) Legolas is still around but has gotten someone to wax his eyebrows into the correct pointy arched Elvish shape, modeling them on Elrond's, and now looks a great deal better.

4) I know precisely dick about Elvish healers, so just deal with mine.

5) I didn't invent the crystal tears, but I did invent the legend.

_And finally_: thank you to all who actually took the time to read this and review, it's an honour. 

**

Night fell over the Shire; the moon raced through tattered clouds, dragging her shadows over field and dale, lending an air of urgency and menace to the land. One by one the little lights marking the hobbit-houses winked out as the hours dragged by, until there was only one left; one flickering window-square of yellow light in a world of shifting silver darkness.

Sam hadn't left his master's side. He remained where he was, only moving to replenish the ice in the basin by the bed, wringing out cool cloths and replacing them one by one as the dry sick heat of Frodo's skin warmed them again. He knew he would have to get help, of course, but something—perhaps the presence of the dagger that still glowed sullenly in the wardrobe—told him that he would not have to go far to find it. Something was coming. Something was on its way. Sam didn't know what, or even whether it was friendly, but he could do nothing more for his master than just stay there as the hours passed, and hold him when he woke crying out from the pain in his chest. Sam's wife Rose had looked in several hours before, and had merely laid a gentle hand on his shoulder, and left him alone with Frodo. It was not her business, and she couldn't have done anything for Frodo that Sam couldn't do—as little as that was. She had brought the doctor, of course, and the doctor had had a brief look at Frodo and gone away again quickly. 

Frodo tossed uneasily under the covers, muttering something about the fire, how he could see into it now, see through the dark slit at the center of the fire...but not make out what was beyond it. He couldn't talk much, even if he'd been lucid; speaking brought on the cough, and now when he coughed, he was bringing up blood. Sam did his best to keep him quiet, but Frodo was growing more and more restive as the hours passed. _I wonder what'll happen when he finally reaches the flames,_ thought Sam miserably. _Will I know?_

**

Once again cloaked Riders galloped through the woods, silent but for the urgent thudding of their horses' hooves and the whipping wind through their clothes. The last Riders had been dead black, riding black horses that seemed to have longer teeth than normal, and their faces had been hidden behind the drape of their black cowls—if they had even had faces. These Riders wore grey, a soft clear grey like smoke in rain, and their hoods were pushed back as they rode, bent forward over the reins, urging their mounts on, faster, on. There were two of them, not nine. But the first thing that anyone would have noticed about them, had anyone been watching the forest road, was the strange pale light that seemed to glow from within their faces—a light that flaked off in little swirls as they rode, and lingered in the dark air behind them. The wind of their riding brought with it a faint sharp, sweet scent, like green apples and rain.

Arwen's dark hair caught and held the glints of light like shreds of stars, streaming out behind her. The elf who matched her pace, neck and neck, was blonde and rather lovely, but not with the ethereal unworldly sort of beauty of the old Elves; he looked not unlike a particularly elegant Man. His name was Legolas Greenleaf, and it had been by the purest chance that he had happened to be at Rivendell when the Lady Arwen had set out for the Shire. They had exchanged few words; they needed few. 

Side by side, the archer and the Lady galloped onwards past the dim lights of the Prancing Pony, hurrying toward what they hoped would not be the end of a long and complicated story. 

They made it to Hobbiton at half past one; the grey clouds were going, and the vault of deep heaven was shining down over the Shire as if all manner of thing were well. Arwen found herself wishing it was raining; it didn't seem.....appropriate, for such a beautiful night to hide such terror. Wordlessly they dismounted, leaving the elvensteeds quiet and unmoving except for the faint heaving of their flanks, and hurried up to the green door of Bag End.

Sam opened it for them before Arwen's fingertips touched the green paint. His face was set and white, and he looked up at them with red, but unsurprised, eyes. "Thank Elbereth you've come," he said roughly. "My lady....my lord......he needs your help."

Legolas ducked under the lintel and hurried inside; Arwen waited a moment, kneeling down beside Sam. "What is it?" she asked softly. "What has happened to him?"

"I don't know," Sam wailed. "It's.....he keeps talking about the Eye....and oh, my lady....Sting is glowing."

Arwen's mouth tightened. She followed Sam through into Frodo's bedroom, and had to pause at the door for a moment as a wave of revulsion splashed through her bones. The atmosphere of evil in the room was as thick as wet-wood smoke. _How could we have missed this? How?_

Legolas was bending over Frodo, who was moaning softly; Arwen could already see they had no time to waste. His porcelain skin was stretched tight over the fine bones of his face; blue-brown shadows pooled beneath his eyes and cheekbones. Sweat glistened on his face and throat. "Arwen," said Legolas roughly, and she didn't notice the lack of the honorific. "He's on fire."

"How long has he been like this?" she demanded. Sam rubbed at his eyes with his thumbs. 

"I found him this morning, collapsed on the floor. He's......well, he's been sick for a few days, I think...he'd never admit it......."

"Help me get him ready," she said. Legolas was already crushing _athelas_ into the water-glass by the bed, and not for the first time Arwen wondered how it had been on that long road, how they had managed to make it home, and what they had had to do on the way. The other Elf's dark eyes looked far too old as he slipped an arm around Frodo's shoulders and helped him drink.

Sam was holding something out to her. She forced herself to look away from Frodo and turned her gaze on the hilt he was offering; an old Elvish blade, the dagger Sting, which had accompanied both Bagginses on their journeys, and warned them of danger. It was glowing like a shard of the moon.

Arwen reached out and took the hilt, and a shock of cold fire flickered through the room; it had been many years since Sting had been touched by one of its own, and it recognized an Elf when it felt one. She nodded. "We must go, Sam." Legolas had already wrapped Frodo in blankets and lifted him in his arms; she could tell by the look on his face that he, too, felt the _wrongness_ burning in the hobbit.

Sam looked from her to Legolas, and his face crumpled. "My lady," he begged, "don't take him away from me, please don't leave me without my master, I swore not to leave him..."

She flicked a glance at Legolas, who nodded once. "Very well, Sam. But you will carry Sting for me. It is no longer the property of the Elves."

Sam took the dagger and reverently tucked it into his belt. They hurried out into the night, and paused for a moment by the horses. As she had said once before, kneeling by a Frodo dying from a different hurt, "I am the faster rider. I will take him."

Legolas looked down at the white face in the blankets, closed his eyes. "I quested with him," he said softly.

"I know. And you may do so again, if we hurry. Give him to me."

This time the other Elf didn't hesitate, lifting Frodo's limp form up to her embrace. She wheeled her horse and spurred off at once, riding again as fast as she could with a dying hobbit in her arms, running this time from a shadow that did not follow at her heels but lay even within her grasp. Legolas and Sam followed after, grimly silent in the dark.

**

The white and ivory cloisters of Rivendell are hung with vines that bear, in autumn, little golden fruits like apples. Their scent, and the scent of the creamy flowers that bloom before the vines bear, has been sung about in Elvish homecoming songs for thousands and thousands of years. The perfume of the cloisters is said to heal the sick, ease sorrow and pain and the grief of a wound. There is some little truth in the stories; the flesh of the golden fruits will restore the strength of a sick man, and the leaves steeped in water will hasten the healing of a wound. Today, the sweet sharp scent of the vines did nothing for Arwen, as she paced up and down the cloister in the long ceremonial robes of the Lady of Rivendell, waiting. It had been only a day since she and Legolas had brought Frodo, white and still save for the bright flecks of blood on his lips, to the Healers. Only a day.

Behind her she heard their light footsteps, and she turned ungracefully to meet them. Rivendell's Healers were twins—Iriliath and Gerylon—and they were almost, almost identical. Iriliath's white-gold hair was slightly longer, and her eyes a shade darker grey than her brother's, but they shared the exquisite bone structure of the high-born Elves, and their closeness as twins seemed to make them more effective Healers. They always worked together, two halves of a whole.

"Well?" Arwen demanded.

Iriliath spread her hands in a graceful gesture of helplessness. "The poison is deep within him, Lady," she said. "It eats at him as a worm eats at a fruit, from within, spreading rottenness."

Gerylon sighed. "It is in his lungs; somehow it has found a way into his body, and it is destroying him. Soon it will eat into a vein, and then...."

Arwen kept her gaze steadily on them. "Can you do nothing for him?"

"We can ease him, at least," said Gerylon. "He will feel neither fear nor pain. It will be like going into a sleep."

"There is no hope, then."

Iriliath bowed her head. "It is in all the gods' hands, Lady. Not in ours."

Arwen turned and sat down on a bench beneath one of the hanging vines. "How......how did this happen? The Ring was destroyed, and with it the evil of Mordor's shadow; how can it be killing him now?"

Gerylon knelt by her and took her hands in his. "We believe.....my sister and I......that when the Ring was destroyed in the fire of Mount Doom, the smoke of its burning carried with it some of the old magics the Dark Lord worked into the metal. The Ringbearer......was close to the chasm when the Ring burned."

"You think he breathed in the poison? That it's been there in his chest all this time?"

Iriliath nodded once. "So very little of it has taken a long time to work its evil. He has carried his death within him since the day of the Ring's destruction."

"Blessed Elbereth," Arwen breathed, "there has to be something we can do."

Neither Healer spoke for a few minutes. Arwen noticed Iriliath's fingers were absently playing with a small silver aspen leaf she wore around her neck.

**

_Hello again, little Ringbearer. Welcome home._

--No. No! We destroyed your Ring, we defeated you, that war is over.

Ah, but here you are again, in my Eye, in the dead light of my Eye's flame, and you are dying, are you not, little Ringbearer? I can feel you dying.

--I don't understand.

You would not understand. You are delicious, though. So delicious. I grow stronger every day—and when I have used you up, little Ringbearer, you shall die, and I shall pass to another host, and another, and I shall make a new _Ring. A Ring a thousand times more powerful than the one you thought you would keep for your own. Oh, yes, little Ringbearer, I know how that came to pass. I was already in your heart, a little. You would have kept the Ring, and I you, but for that piteous creature who had possessed the Ring before. It was his greed that ended your little war, Ringbearer. His greed and not your nobility._

--I would have given it up.

Would you? 

All around him the roaring darkness receded and became a horribly familiar scene—the stinking red-and-black pit of Mount Doom, the incandescent bestial heat of that place. He was standing, weary as death, with the Ring in his hand, and he was about to cast it into the heart of the mountain, about to end the whole horrible quest, about to stop the darkness, and he _could not do it._ His own words echoed in his head like hammerblows._ I have come. But I do not choose now to do what I came to do. I will not do this deed. The Ring is mine!_

Frodo cried out, clutching his maimed hand, and began to cough; and with each cough the pain of the lost finger and the pain of the thing growing inside him grew worse and worse until they eclipsed everything, and he was nothing but a fragment of memory on a sea of pain, and then even that was gone.

_I will win, little Ringbearer, _said the bubbling, choked voice of the thing. _I always do, in the end._

**

They had left Arwen alone with him for a little while. Mostly Sam sat with him in the white, airy room, perched in an Elf-sized chair, his feet not touching the ground. But they had let her in, for a little while. 

She sat by his bed, with the four-fingered hand lying hot and limp in hers. It was an interesting scar, she reflected. Smeagol's razor teeth had neatly cut down to the bone, and through the bone, and the stump had healed smoothly over with the Elves' care. It looked almost as if he had been born with nine fingers, as if the whole horrible adventure had never even happened.

As Arwen stared, the hand closed on itself, closed tight enough so that the knuckles blanched, and Frodo's mouth tightened in pain. She bent closer, gently stroking his hair out of his face. At her touch, his eyes opened a slit, and she bit her lip so hard she drew blood, because _his eyes had changed._ The blue was still there, mostly. But the pupils were no longer round. Frodo looked up at her with the slit pupils of a snake.

Those horrible black slits dilated, contracted. He saw her. He knew her.

".......Arwen," he croaked. "Arwen Evenstar....._help me_...."

She felt her hand close over his. "Hush, Frodo," she managed. "You're safe here."

"No," he gasped. "It....wants....once it's killed me, it wants more......."

She went cold all over. "What is it, Frodo?"

"....don't know.....feels like Sauron......"

Arwen bowed her head over Frodo's maimed hand. "Iriliath was right," she murmured. "It.....speaks to you?"

Frodo coughed, coughed again, his hand tightening convulsively in hers. She bent over and slipped an arm around him, supporting him as the spasm ran its course. Fresh blood bloomed on the sheets. _We don't have much time......_

Eventually he could gasp in a breath, and she would have let him lie back, but he clung to her as if he could never let go. "It speaks in my head," he gasped. "Arwen.....when I die....._you mustn't let anyone near me_......."

Arwen could feel tears starting. "Frodo, don't talk like that," she said miserably. "You won't die. We'll heal you. Somehow, we'll heal you."

He pulled back and stared at her with those awful slit eyes—eyes that were worse because of the remains of Frodo she could see in them. "Promise me," he said hoarsely. "Promise me you won't let it have anyone else."

Arwen stared back, then nodded, once. 

He didn't speak again; shortly after that he had another fit of coughing and slipped back into the strange delirious coma state. 

"You were right," she said softly, in the cloisters. "He says....it will take over another body, when he dies. It has already.....changed.......his eyes."

Iriliath paled a little. "It is more powerful than I had thought. I must speak with my brother." She nodded, and the Healer hurried off to find her other half.

Left alone in the fragrant quiet of the cloisters, with a drop of Frodo's blood staining the pale silks of her gown, Arwen Evenstar sat down and wept. All the trials, all the battles and the deaths and the brief bright moments in between the dark and the dark, had been for nothing now. She remembered with the perfect recall of the Elves the day she'd called the flood down upon the Nine, at the ford; that other desperate ride against time and danger, with Frodo curled in her arms. She supposed she had fallen a little bit in love, that day. Aragorn......was different. Frodo Baggins was like no one she had ever met; he had a strange kind of beauty unlike the high elegant loveliness of her people, but she couldn't deny that it _was_ beauty—the huge, luminous eyes, the chiseled nose, the mobile and elegant little mouth—were unforgettable. She remembered not even noticing his beauty, though, being struck so deeply by the mithril_ strength_ of him—so young and so determined, bearing such a great responsibility. She hid her face in her hands and wept for the waste of all he had done.

The Healers paused in the doorway, seeing her bent and sobbing under the golden vinefruits, and would have retreated to let her be alone; she, like them, had realized there was no hope.........but Gerylon stopped his sister. He tilted his head, listening. Above the gentle hush of the wind and the everpresent singing of the birds, above Arwen's helpless sobs, they could hear a faint, crystalline tinkling.

Iriliath frowned. "That's a legend. It's never been seen in my lifetime."

Gerylon waved her quiet and hurried forward, kneeling down by the Lady of Rivendell. Her pale skirts spread out around her like a flower, and lying like tiny diamonds in the folds of the cloth and on the polished stone of the pavement were little crystal drops, perfectly round. Arwen was crying softly now, the force of her grief spent, but tears still seeped between her fingers and fell with that faint bell-like tinkle to the ground.

Iriliath picked up one of the crystal tears. It was cool and hard to her touch, like polished stone, and lay on the palm of her hand and glowed gently in the sun. She felt her weariness fade noticeably.

With quiet gallantry, Gerylon drew Arwen's hands away from her face. "My lady," he said, gently. "My lady, you have given us some hope."

Arwen stared at him, her eyes brimming. He held out his hand, cupped around a sparkling heap of the crystal tears. "I don't understand," she said, unevenly.

"It is a legend, my lady. An old Healers' legend. The crystal tears of a highborn Elf, when shed in true and honest grieving.......are a most sovereign remedy for all poisons of the body and the soul."

.....to be continued.


	3. and a bunch of songs

Disclaimer as above, no copyright infringement intended, no ownership of LOTR characters or related indicia, no money being made, yadda yadda.

I'm seriously touched that you hardcore LOTR people are actually a) reading and b) enjoying this. Hope is on the way. Slowly and painfully (this _is_ an angstfic) but it's on the way. Read and see.

The first two things Legolas sings are from _Tom Bombadil_; the third is all me, baby. I think, anyway. 

Oh, and although we are here committing the mortal sin of inserting a lesser ficdom into Tolkien, I think this poem from Dragonlance Legends is more than appropriate to the subject.

__

Water from dust, and dust rising out of the water

Continents forming, abstract as colour or light

To the vanished eye, to the touch of Paladine's daughter

Who knows with a touch that the robe is white

Out of that water a country is rising, impossible

When first imagined in prayer

As the sun and the seas and the stars invisible

As gods in a code of air

Dust from the water, and water arising from dust

And the robe containing all colours assumed into white

Into memory, into countries assumed in the trust

Of ever returning colour and light

Out of that dust arises a wellspring of tears

To nourish the work of our hands

In forever approaching countries of yearning and years

In due and immanent lands.

**

Legolas paced. It was an excellent place for such activities, was Rivendell; the elfcity huddled in the embrace of its forested valley as gems huddle in rock, but there were verandas and promenades skirting all the chambers, and there were many courtyards sheltered by fragrant trees in which to pace. Currently he was measuring the western wall of a balcony that leaned out over a waterfall. Golden leaves trickled down through the soft air; the constant gentle laughing of the water should have soothed its listener, but he found no ease in it. Every now and then he would pull a slender arrow from the quiver strapped across his back and send it winging out into the forest; already an ancient birch tree sported ten arrows in a neat ring stuck in its bark. Eventually, when his mood eased, Legolas would go out into the forest and reclaim the arrows, closing the holes in the birch's bark with a murmured word, but for now he paced with his bow tight-strung in his hand, and wondered if he had enough accuracy to write an inscription in arrowpoints beneath the ring.

Behind him, footsteps approached. His fingers tightened convulsively on the bow's strapped grip, but he knew the footsteps, and he forced himself to turn slowly and greet the newcomer. "Sam," he said, quietly. "Is there any change?"

Through elven eyes, Samwise Gamgee had never been particularly prepossessing; a stocky, solid hobbit with a shock of unruly ginger hair and a broad, honest sort of face, he was easily ignored and more easily underestimated. Legolas had known him long enough to make neither mistake.

The hobbit sighed and sat down on the edge of a flight of stone steps. "They won't let me in to see him, sir," he told Legolas. "They're terribly busy."

Legolas nodded, pale hair falling across his forehead. "They would not let me in, either."

Sam looked up at him. "Sir............is Mr Frodo going to die?"

Legolas put down his bow and walked over to Sam with the strange catlike economical grace the hobbit had never quite gotten used to. "Sam," he said softly, kneeling down and resting a hand on Sam's shoulder, "if I could answer you, I would. I do not know."

Sam nodded, rubbing at his face, searching for a distraction, and found one. Someone had left an Elvish harp perched on the parapet of the balcony—a harp missing several strings and with its silver inlay dull and dark with age, but still a lovely thing. "Can............can you play that, sir?" he asked dully.

Legolas blinked, lifted the harp in his arms. "Once, a long time ago, I knew the way of it," he said. "My fingers may have forgotten their skill."

"Would you play, sir?" Sam asked, and Legolas heard the note of pleading in his voice. "I always did like to hear an Elvish tune...."

Wordlessly Legolas settled himself crosslegged on the steps with the old harp in his lap, and closed his eyes. His fingers, bow-callused and lacking the elegance of Elvish music-makers, crept across the strings, and a deep ripple of sound suddenly hung in the air.

Beside him Sam gasped and closed his eyes. Legolas sighed and let himself relax, trying to remember the harp-lessons his much younger self had struggled through, hundreds of years before, in the forests of Lothlorien. His fingers began to move, slowly at first, then more surely as memory and skill returned, stroking a low dark melody out of the harp that seemed to drift along the ground like fog in the morning. Words came out of memory.

"_I walked by the sea, and there came to me,_

as a star beam on the wet sand,

a white shell like a sea-bell;

trembling it lay in my wet hand.

In my fingers shaken I heard waken

a ding within, by a harbour bar,

a buoy swinging, a call ringing

over endless seas, faint now and far......."

He blinked, trailing off, the melody still hanging low on the air. Sam was watching him silently, tears glinting in the corners of his eyes. "Go on, sir," he muttered. "Please."

Legolas nodded once and struck a different tune out of the strings, not knowing where it came from, hearing each note only as he played it and not before. 

"_There was a merry passenger,_" he sang, "_a messenger, a mariner,_

he built a gilded gondola

to wander in, and had in her

a load of yellow oranges

and porridge for his provender;

he perfumed her with marjoram

and cardamom and lavender.........."

The song rose and fell, its self-referential intricate rhymes drifting lightly on the still air, like the notes of the jade flute he had heard once in the woods. Beside him, Sam swayed lightly to the rhythm of his playing, but said nothing; he seemed very far away, sailing with the traveller to the archipelagoes of gold, riding beside him with sword of emerald and habergeon of crystal, and Legolas found that he himself could almost smell the salt of the seas the song held in it, and with the deep longing of all Elves he thought of the starlight on the Western Seas, and his fingers fell silent on the harpstrings.

Sam murmured something, but Legolas could not hear; he was no longer seeing the drifting gold of the autumn leaves, nor feeling the light breeze lift his hair; he was watching grey ships disappear beyond a horizon, and straining his hawk-sight to catch the last glimmering of a captured star's light in a crystal vial. Without his knowing it, he lifted the harp again, and began to play; and this time what he played was not quite beautiful.

"_You cannot know, all you who dwell_

beyond the fiery setting sun

what you have left behind you;

to those you left as daylight fell

and nothing was but was undone

the passage served to blind you.........."

With an effort he stilled his fingers on the harpstrings and set the instrument aside, quelling the urge to throw it violently over the balcony. The images that last song had burned into his head were not fair; the leavetaking had been a permanent one, and those who had been left behind were left with nothing but their sorrow and their memories of those gone on before—those gone on into the light and the far green shore, forgetting their old friends.

Sam reached out and tentatively touched his arm. "Sir.....?"

Legolas sighed, letting go of the memory—whatever it had been—and ruffled the hobbit's hair. "I am sorry," he said. "The harp awakes strange thoughts in me."

"It's what's going to happen, isn't it?" Sam asked quietly. "What you saw."

Legolas closed his eyes for a long moment. "I do not know, Sam. Let be."

Sam nodded, got to his feet slowly. "Thank you, sir. It's been a long while since I heard Elvish music."

Legolas felt a helpless little smile tug at his mouth. "Come, Sam, and let us see if they will allow us to visit Frodo."

**

_I told you I would win, little Ringbearer. Can you not feel the world fading from you? Can you not feel the tides of your blood drawn slower and slower through your heart?_

--Let me be. You will not pass to another.

Oh? And you will stop me? You have not the strength to speak, let alone to stop the others from coming close. I shall pass to them on your last breath, little one. The irony is delicious, is it not?

--I could not destroy you before. I will not let you rise again. I will not fail twice.

You don't have a choice in the matter. Soon I shall grow strong again, and my armies shall darken the face of Middle-Earth, and my Eye shall burn unchallenged in the East. I shall have accomplished what I set out to do three thousand years ago, little Ringbearer, and you—yes, you—shall have helped me on my way, as much as if you truly had kept the One Ring and allowed me to have you, last time we met.

--I have warned them. They will not let you cross over. You will die with me.

Ah, you are so very young, little one. I keep forgetting. I am as old as this world, Ringbearer. I cannot be destroyed; I am creation's shadow. I will never die.

Frodo, lost in the flowing burning darkness, reached out for his captor.

_Yes,_ it hissed, the voice thick and rotted. _Come to me. I shall have you in the end, anyway. Come to me of your own choice, and I will make your end a quick one._

He hung in the void, in the voice, his body nothing more than a collection of agonies, a weight upon him, and he reached out for the thing that was eating him, and for a brief and brilliant second he touched it. Those watching by his bed drew back in horror, for it seemed that bright fire blazed along all his veins, making his pale skin glow, and his body arched up from the pillows, then fell back; and all was as it had been. They could not know that in that moment when Frodo had touched the thing that wore the Eye of Sauron, he had learned a truth.

_--You lie_, he managed. _You were not always thus._

I am eternal. I am unchanged. It sounded angry, as if he had touched a nerve.

_--No. You were eaten by it as you are now eating me. You were not created so._

Be quiet!

--You were once mortal, weren't you. As I am.

Be quiet! it howled again, and raked its claws, and in the mortal realm Frodo's body curled up in helpless coughing. _You know nothing! Nothing! I am eternal!_

Strangely, the knowledge made it easier for him to hang on. The distant pain of his body dying didn't seem to bother him so much now. He hung in the blackness of the Eye and waited, for now he was sure that the thing holding him was not as powerful as it had always seemed. Memory and sensation fell away from him; he was merely a mind in the darkness, hanging there, waiting.

**

Iriliath and Gerylon had torn apart the City's libraries searching for the myths that surrounded crystal tears. They had not been seen on Middle-earth for almost three thousand years, and they had become myth, and legend, and vague memory. Only the High Elves, and those with High Elven blood, had the capability of producing tears that hardened to pure crystal as they fell, and then only if they wept for true grief—not frustration, nor sadness, nor anger, but true and selfless grief of the sort that blinds and deafens and bends the griever double with its weight. A single crystal tear was worth many hundred times its weight in gems.

They had a cup full of them, a drinking-cup hastily borrowed from the Council chamber. Both of them had told Arwen—and each other--not to hope too hard, that this was nothing more than a chance, and that it had been so long since the crystal tears had been used in healing that they might not find the legends teaching them the way of it.

They did not have a great deal of time. Frodo's fever had risen, and risen again, until he was so hot it was painful to touch his skin for very long. None of the Elves' most sovereign remedies had done anything for the fever, nor for the terrible choking cough that stained his pillows with scarlet and echoed nastily in the vaults of the chamber. Once or twice he had opened his eyes, staring blindly around the room, and they had noticed with a sick chill that now there was a faint red glitter in the depths of those unnatural eyes. 

All day they had been searching through the lore, and the shadows of the rowan-trees were leaning in through the Library windows when Iriliath let out a startled cry.

"I have found it," she said simply. "We must have pure water and _athelas_, and heartsease, and needfire."

Gerylon rose and gathered up the scrolls he had been reading. "Make the fire. I will bring the other things here."

Iriliath stripped off the silver diadem she wore, the rings, the brooch fastening her cloak, and the belt of silver and pale gems that held her kirtle at the waist. Needfire had to be kindled without jewellery. As her brother hurried out of the room, she sorted through the woodstack by the fireplace and came out with a twig of oak, one of ash, and one of rowan, and she knelt down in a splash of low sunlight, and she began to make a fire. This was old, old magic, had been old before ever the Elves came to the shores of Middle-Earth, and she had never been trained in its use; it was only by chance that she and Gerylon had learnt the making of needfire, for they had been curious, as elfchildren, and the lore of the Library had been within reach.

He came back with handfuls of herbs still warm and fragrant from the day's sun. "What now?"

Iriliath sat back on her heels. "A silver bowl......and we must bless it, with the old blessings of the Liiri and the Maradhuin. Take my hands."

Brother and sister knelt over the pale bluish flame of the needfire with a silver basin in their hands, murmuring the chant and counter-chant in the tongue so old neither of them understood its words, though they knew them by heart. It seemed as if no time at all had passed when the blessing was complete, yet the shadows of the rowan thicket had moved across the floor, stretched out, and the light had dimmed and reddened with the closing of day.

They dropped their hands, and the silver bowl floated gently on the air a few inches above the licking flames of the needfire. Quickly, wasting no time, Gerylon poured spring-water into it from the glass flask he carried, and together they crushed handfuls of kingsfoil and heartsease into the water as it began to steam. 

"What now, sister?" Gerylon asked. Iriliath kept her gaze on the seething water in the bowl as she reached behind her for the drinking-cup full of crystal tears.

"The writing called for only one," she murmured. "But this is no ordinary poison."

Gerylon, in a completely uncharacteristic move, closed his hand gently over her wrist and tilted it. The tiny avalanche of crystal spheres glittered and ran together as they poured in a rush into the silver bowl, all of them, every one. Neither Gerylon nor Iriliath considered that they had held the ransom of every king ever born on Middle-Earth in their closed hands, and had let it slide away into the boiling water. All either of them could see was the faint, faint red glow that had started to light the darkness of Frodo's slitted pupils. A tiny pinprick of red back in that darkness; tiny, but getting bigger all the time. 

Together, they peered into the silver bowl. White light had begun to gather in its bottom; they could no longer see the swirling crushed leaves of the herbs Gerylon had gathered, nor the transparent glitter of Arwen's crystal tears; white light filled the bowl, swirling a little as the liquid moved. As they watched, the clear water became white, opaque, pearly; and in another moment it was liquid pearl, bright brilliant nacreous white, glowing gently. The scent of rain and green apples filled the Library.

For a moment neither Healer breathed; then Iriliath said, softly, in awe, "It is the Life."

"The Life," echoed Gerylon. "I had thought its secret lost long ago, many thousand years before our ancestors came to this land."

"Then the wellspring.......?" Iriliath began. He shook his head.

"Not now. If this is truly the Life, we must hurry, sister. It is sorely needed."

He preceded her; she held the precious bowl in her hands, feeling the warm tingle as its power licked through the pure silver and into her flesh. This was their last hope. If Frodo did not respond........

But Iriliath put away that thought, and walked steadily into the sickroom, the light of the bowl she carried filling every corner of the chamber, banishing the strange shadows that had seemed to grow and move around as the day went by. She sat down by Frodo's bed, unable to repress a sigh at the sight of him. Brown shadows smudged every hollow of his face; he had gone beyond pale to grey, and fever-sweat plastered his dark hair to his forehead. Gerylon smoothed it away as Iriliath dipped her ring finger in the swirling pearl and let one drop fall in the center of his brow.

Frodo's small body jerked in spasm, arching up from the bed, and as quickly relaxed again. His breathing came in little ragged gasps. Iriliath made her finger steady itself as she murmured the words of the spell and let the second drop fall.

This time it took all Gerylon's strength to hold him down to the bed; his eyes were open, staring, and that foul red light was brighter than ever. It seemed to them as if his teeth had grown sharper, and yellowish. Iriliath raised her voice and let the third drop fall to set the spell in motion.

Frodo screamed. It wasn't the scream of a hobbit in agony; it was the thin grating scream of a Ringwraith. They held him firmly as he twisted and thrashed in their grip, screaming, his eyes glowing scarlet slits. But although the thing that writhed in the bed was not Frodo, had not been Frodo for some days now, Iriliath _felt_ him trying to come back. She imagined that the red light was fading a little, and perhaps it was.

"Frodo," she said urgently. "Frodo, we are about to give you the Life. You must cast out this thing inside you, do you understand? You must cast it out."

His cracked lips moved a little; she bent closer. "..........can't.....let it out...........it will enter you........"

"No," she said calmly, nodding to Gerylon. "We are protected, Frodo." Beside her, Gerylon lifted his finger and gently dropped three drops of the Life on her brow. It was warm, like sunlight after winter. She did the same for him. "We are protected. It cannot enter us, and it is too weak to search for other hosts."

Frodo's terrible eyes rolled up, and he went limp in her arms as he retreated to struggle with the thing that was fighting inside him. She was about to lift the bowl to his lips when the door of the chamber flew open behind her, banging off its hinges with the force that had moved it. 

"My lady—" Gerylon began, but Arwen stopped him with a glance, standing in the doorway, her hair lifting about her as if whipped by a wind.

"Let me be here," she said simply, and her voice had the overtones and harmonics that had made Elrond a leader to be followed. Both Healers bowed, slowly.

"My lady, let me prepare you," Gerylon said, softly. Arwen nodded once. Iriliath could feel the power surging within her, the power that had called down the flood on the Ringwraiths, the power that had kept Frodo alive once before when he would have died of a Morgul-steel wound. Gerylon applied the three drops of the pearly Life to her forehead, where they sat in a row like gems on a diadem too fine to be seen. She joined Iriliath at the bedside.

"Do it," she said.

Iriliath once more lifted Frodo from the pillows, trying not to wince as his skin burned her fingers. Gerylon supported him from the other side as she raised the vessel of the Life to Frodo's cracked lips. She tilted it a very little, and some of the liquid pearl trickled into his mouth, and he was just conscious enough to swallow. It brought him a little further up, and she gave him a little more, and a little more, and then suddenly he threw his head back and screamed. 

Arwen shuddered and took his hands in hers, remembering the last time she had heard that scream. It went on and on as he thrashed and writhed in the grip of the Healers. "Frodo," she heard herself say. "You must get it out. You must rid yourself of it. Do it _now_."

And Frodo curled forward in their arms, his eyes squeezed shut, and began to cough. At first all three of them thought it was nothing more than one of his terrible coughing fits, that it would be over in a moment, but he kept coughing on and on, deeper and harsher than before, and now instead of bright drops of blood there was something like black smoke curling from his lips with each cough, something that seemed alive, turning its tendrils this way and that, sniffing for somewhere to hide. More and more of it came out of him, a cloud of the stuff, thick noisome black smoke with things like red sparks dancing in its depths. At last the flow of the smoke trickled away and Frodo's desperate, hysterical coughing eased its way off into weak retches, and they held him until he could lie back against the pillows, exhausted. The cloud was hanging over the bed, searching. One by one it approached them, retreated, swirling angrily, as it felt the protection of the Life on all three Elves, and on its erstwhile host. 

Arwen's face was white and set as she rose to her feet and faced the cloud. She dipped the fingertips of both hands in the Life and began, slowly, to trace outlines of runic letters in the air. Faint glowing lines hung where her fingers had passed. 

Both the Healers realized what she was doing, and they, too, began to draw the letters in the air. The cloud shrank back from them. Arwen's clear voice fell like crystal bells on the room as she began to chant, and a moment later Gerylon's and Iriliath's voices joined hers. The white letters circled the cloud, slowly swirling around it, and their pale-lit words went on and on, unceasing, unmerciful, inescapable. The net of runes they had woven between them grew smaller and smaller around the cloud.

Realizing it was trapped, the thing began to scream again in fear and rage, a thin high scream that set their ears on edge and made their hair stand stiff. They did not pause in their chanting, nor did the cage of words halt; it tightened and tightened around the cloud, crushing it further and further down. Arwen's chanting intensified, her words hissed through the air, sharp-edged and hard as obsidian. The air seemed to thicken around them, to grow darker; they swayed, but did not pause in their work. The cloud was nothing more than a pinprick now, glowing with the runic cage. The room darkened further; the air weighed like water on their shoulders.

And suddenly it was gone. It seemed that there was a flash of blinding light and a thunderclap that deafened them all; yet none could remember hearing anything. Air rushed back into the room with a dull rumble, and the light sped back up to its normal pace, and the unnatural shadows retreated.

All three Elves turned as one to look at Frodo. He lay crumpled against the pillows, hair tumbled over his face, his eyes closed, and for one awful moment both the Healers and the Lady thought that they had gone too far; but even before Iriliath's desperate fingers closed on his wrist, his eyelashes fluttered and parted, and great luminous blue eyes looked up at them sleepily.

"I feel _awful_," he said. "Where am I?"

to be continued.........


	4. and some foreshadowing

Disclaimer as before: no money being made, more's the pity, and no copyright infringement intended. I borrowed a line from _Christine_ at the end of the second full paragraph, cos Stephen King said it better. This chapter has been so long in coming for several reasons: one, it's damn hard to type with Saruman-nails, two, I'm working seven days a week, and three, I've been as inspired as a cheap romance novel for quite some time. Having taken a detour through some of the better sick-Frodo fics out there (I'm looking at you, Frodo Baggins of Bag End) I thought it might be time to have another go.

_Red flame and black void and laughing, always the laughing, as the hideous creatures screamed and raked their claws inside his chest; the roaring on and on of the Eye, so big it filled the world, the thick bestial heat of it, the darkness and the fire and the heat and........._

And suddenly it faded, as if someone had closed the door of the biggest furnace in the world; the heat and the roaring and the pain faded, and there was a sharp sweet scent of green apples and rain.......cold greenness washed over him like water. The voices snarled with fury, digging deeper into him, and for a moment the pain came back in full; but there were hands holding him, he could feel them, cool dry hands holding him tight as the thing inside him struggled to keep its clutching hold. Insistent voices murmured at him, but all he could hear was that roaring, that singleminded purpose, that unending fury, as it rose into a thin high shriek.

There was another wave of the pale cool scent of apples and rain, and suddenly Frodo was pulled_, as though two separate things had caught him and were trying to tear him in two. He cried out, curling against the hands that held him steady. _

Someone was talking to him, quite close; he found he could hear, and understand. Arwen,_ he thought. _Arwen is here, with me.

_The thought gave him a little strength. Voices came and went in great swooping heaves around him as the awful pulling went on and on, and he could hear, and understand, and even as he knew what they wanted the coughing seized him, seized him harder than ever before, and he gave up thought and effort and just curled into a miserable knot while his lungs shredded themselves to pieces. It wasn't just the ordinary deep thudding pain he had grown used to these past days; it was as if burning liquid metal filled his chest and throat, as if it was hanging on in there, not wanting to come up. They held him gently. Somewhere inside all that pain he was still aware of that; their cool hands steadied him as he choked and gasped, they spoke to him in soft meaningless murmurs, and slowly, very slowly, he felt it beginning to ease. _

At first he couldn't breathe at all, it was as if he was trying to gasp in breath underwater; but slowly the agonizing tightness eased, and his coughing became ragged, less harsh, and finally trailed off into miserable retching. The pain was fading too, now, and there was a silence in his head where for days there had been nothing but roaring fury. He had time to realize that he was free, finally free, before the darkness rose around him and bore him away.

Clear autumn light dripped down through the leaves of Rivendell. Gold and crimson and brilliant orange dipped and swayed in the breeze; slowly, as if the air was thick and heavy as syrup, the leaves danced downwards to land in drifts on the old carven balconies and verandas of the city. 

Frodo lay, propped up by pillows and draped in pale blankets, on a couch they had carried out for him, in the sun. Arwen sat beside him, her fingers tracing the delicate shape of an aspen leaf, as if committing it to memory. The sun struck dim red sparks in the darkness of his hair; there was a little colour in his face, now, but he still had the bluish shadows under his eyes, and his skin had the pale transparency of the invalid. It had been almost a week since the spell-weaving, and Sam had left his side for the first time to go and get some rest; he had been watching over Frodo ever since he had been allowed into the sickroom.

"It wasn't always like that," Frodo said, absently. His voice had suffered, too; it was rougher than it had been, a little lower. It was the voice of a much older hobbit. 

"What do you mean?" Arwen looked up from her leaf, struck by the musing quality of his voice. He started a little, as if he had forgotten she was there.

"The thing. Whatever it was......we called it Sauron, but I don't know if that's really accurate." He gave her a quick little smile, but it didn't warm his eyes. "I touched it, you know. When I was there, inside the blackness......I touched it." He coughed.

Arwen's gaze was steady, but her fingers were shredding the aspen leaf into fragments of gold. "And what was it you touched?"

"I'm not entirely sure," he sighed. "It wasn't always like that. Once it had been......alive, I suppose, and less evil. It had been eaten, as it was eating me. The.....the dark power....is older than Sauron."

"You are sure of this?"

Frodo nodded, simply. Arwen sighed.

"You have given us a great deal to do, Frodo," she said, wryly. "You keep waking up old legends, and showing us that there is something to them, when we have given them up as nothing more than superstitious foolery."

He coughed a little. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be." Arwen's hand reached out and took his, gently. "We need to be reminded, from time to time, that we do not know everything yet."

"Yet," he repeated, with a smile. "Gimli once told me that there is nothing quite so arrogant as an elf."

Arwen smiled back, and her face changed subtly from porcelain mask to lovely young woman. "Ah," she said, "but at least we have the grace to admit our failings, unlike our dwarven friends."

Frodo chuckled, carefully, so as not to cough. "Perhaps you do, but I wouldn't try that on with Galadriel."

"She would merely look impassive and ethereal," Arwen agreed; "I wouldn't bother. Drink your medicine." She handed him a glass, decorated subtly—as everything else was, here—with gentle flowing designs of interlacing feathery shapes. He made a face.

"Must I?"

"Yes, you must. Iriliath will be cross with me if you have a relapse."

Frodo scowled at the glass, but took it from her fingers. "Then you might ask her if there's any way she can make it taste better. This stuff is awful."

"Iriliath isn't the potion-brewer of the two," Arwen agreed, "but in Gerylon's stead, she does well enough."

Frodo drank with bad grace, shuddering. "When can I get up? I'm tired of being wrapped up in blankets and carried around by a brace of supercilious-looking Elves."

"You will get up when Iriliath decides you are well enough," she told him sternly. "Your cough isn't going away as fast as she'd like."

He sighed, flopping back on the pillows. Arwen reached out and stroked his hair, the brown curls glinting red in the sun, springing back as she gently drew her fingers through them. "I'm tired of being ill," he muttered.

"I know," she said softly. She had not yet mustered the courage to tell him what she must tell him, that the Life had one most permanent effect on its recipient. That he was no longer quite mortal. "I know, Frodo."

Impulsively he reached out for her, burying his face in her shoulder, and she held him gently, as she had held him once before on the river-shore. He coughed, coughed again, caught his breath. Arwen began to rub his back, in long slow circles, her fingers soothing away his fear and his pain and his frustration. "Hush," she murmured. "Have patience, Frodo. You have all the time in the world to recover."

And she was glad she had left her hair down, for the dark, shining tresses curtained her face and hid the suspicious brightness in her eyes.

**

Gerylon rode hard into the dawning, his horse's hooves churning up the mist like a solid thing. If one legend had been true, then others might follow; and if that held true for the old, old story of the Wellspring, then the Houses of Healing would never again have to fail in their duty. He ignored the tendrils of damp hair that flicked into his eyes and plastered themselves to his face; he ignored the gnawing hunger of a day and a night without food or rest, and he rode into the dawn that no longer stank of the distant pits of Mordor, but bore a freshening breeze with the edge of autumn.

**

Frodo couldn't sleep, not with the windows wide open and the soft sounds of night rain drifting in through the casements; but he loved the rain. Ever since he'd lived with Bilbo, at Bag End, he had loved the rain; Bilbo had told him such stories of adventures and campouts in all sorts of weather.......and for a while he had wished for adventures of his own, before one had fallen into his hands engraved with the language of Mordor. Still, he loved rain, and he found himself slipping out of bed and making his unsteady way over to the windowseat. 

He still felt horribly weak, and even the short hobble from the bed had tired him, but there was a strange new feeling in his bones; it was as if he seemed to _belong_ here more than he had before, as if this his second awakening at Rivendell had been, somehow, more than his first. 

Frodo pushed away the vaguely disquieting thought of having _changed_, curled up on the windowseat, fighting down his cough, and looked out into the darkness. The sussurus of rain on leaves filled the night up to the brim.

He had almost fallen asleep where he sat when the door of his room opened silently, letting in a dim flood of light and the silhouette of a hobbit. Frodo turned with reflexes so fast they surprised him, and his body was already tensing when he knew the silhouette and its owner, and leaned back against the windowseat again. "Sam," he said, tightly, so he would not start coughing. "What are you doing here?"

"I knew your windows was open, Mr. Frodo," said Sam stoutly, "and I thought as how the damp would be bad for your cough."

Frodo grinned in the dark. He knew Sam had demanded the room next to his, would be alert for any sounds of movement when he ought to be in bed. Nevertheless, he suffered himself to be helped back under the covers and tucked in, strangely aware of the way Sam had grown up since they had known one another back in the Shire, before all of this had happened; aware of how the other hobbit had grown, aged, and changed. Strangely, he himself felt as if he would never change again, as if he had frozen time here and now. He was not sure he liked the idea.

Sam bustled about, closing the windows and coming back to the bed to lay a hand on Frodo's forehead. Frodo sighed. "I'm _all right_, Sam," he said, and, predictably, began to cough. Sam frowned at him.

"You don't sound good, Mr. Frodo," he said sternly, "not good at all. Haven't you been taking the medicine that Elf healer makes for you?"

"It tastes," said Frodo, catching his breath, "like rancid dishwater. Go to bed, Sam, I'm all right."

Sam managed to look even solider than usual and lit the lamps by the bed. "Just you stay there, Mr. Frodo. I'll be back in a moment."

Frodo laced his fingers behind his head and lay back with a sigh. Sam was distressingly observant, he thought, as the itch in his chest rose again. He hoped the other hobbit wasn't waking the Healers, who would be less than thrilled to be rousted out of bed at this hour and made to visit a recalcitrant patient. Luckily, Sam returned with nothing but a small bottle, corked and wax-sealed with a seal Frodo thought he'd seen before, somewhere. 

"Just you lie back and relax," said Sam comfortably, and unbuttoned Frodo's nightshirt with deft fingers. Frodo watched him suspiciously, but said nothing.

Sam snapped the thread and worked the stopper out of the little bottle, and immediately a sharp cool scent filled the air, smelling of crushed mint and lemon-balm and something else, something high and sweet and clear. He poured a little of the bottle's contents into the palm of one hand, then rubbed his hands together and gently began to rub Frodo's chest, slowly, his stubby fingers moving in little circles.

Frodo let his breath out; he had been holding it so as not to cough, but the scent of the oil was like a drink of cool water, quelling the itching in his chest, clearing the thick feeling, the tightness, the pain. He closed his eyes as Sam kept rubbing, firmly but gently, working from his collarbones to the base of his ribs and back again, and for the first time since this had begun, he found that he was no longer thinking about breathing; it came naturally, as it had not been doing for days and days. 

Eventually Sam straightened up and wiped his hands on his breeches. "There," he said, drawing Frodo's shirt closed over his chest and pulling the blankets up to cover him. "Is that any better?"

Frodo nodded sleepily and gave him a smile—a real smile, not the distant half-smile he'd been using recently. For a moment he was just Frodo Baggins and not the Ringbearer or the victim of Sauron or the hope of Middle-Earth....and then the lines of tension and worry and pain and effort slid back into his face. Sam sighed a little and squeezed his hand. "I'll stay till you're sleeping, Mr. Frodo," he said. He knew about the nightmares.

Frodo squeezed back and closed his eyes. Sam had settled himself to another sleepless night of watching when a strange sound made itself known to him. For a moment he wondered what on earth it could be, and then a wide, simply happy grin spread over his face as he realized Frodo was snoring.

***

to be continued........Gerylon valiantly journeying afar and feeding the eagles in the east, confessions, explanations, and understandings; and yes, hope does continue, if a fine small thread of it. Also Legolas's triumphant reappearance. And stuff. I'm thinking, if this gets any kind of happy response, to keep doing this sort of thing—I have several ideas for stories of this kind in my head. You should _see_ the bookshelf over my desk: Merck Manuals 11 through 16, _Pulmonology Today_, _Medical Nursing, An Everyday Herbal, John Hall's Casebook, Drugs A-Z, The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics_, and so on. Look for all _sorts_ of interesting things to happen to our darling characters. 


	5. and a bit of literature

Disclaimer as before: no money made, no infringement intended. 

Gerylon slid off his horse in the dim light of dawning, and half ran, half-staggered towards the vague shape in the mist he desperately hoped he recognized. The curving shapes of the portal were familiar to any scholar of ancient Elven lore, but he did not know whether he would find what he sought within.

He pushed aside the veils of growing vine-leaves and found himself faced with a door so ancient and so thick with old filth that he was not at all sure even his elven skills could open it. Nevertheless, he set his fingers to the ancient wood and muttered a charm under his breath.

Nothing happened, unsurprisingly. Gerylon sighed, tucking strands of damp hair back behind his ears, and tried another charm. Nothing.

He slipped off his cloak; the morning was warm, despite the thickness of the fog. Years and years of training slid through his mind with the perfect easy recall of the Elves. Something flickered in his memory; with a shrug, he drew a complicated wiggly sigil in the air and muttered something in the Old Tongue, older than Quenya, older than any of the Elven languages; older than Men.

The ancient door slid open.

Gerylon breathed in, slowly, aware of the thickness of the old air. Darkness was not so much a quality of light as a quality of air, in this ancient shrine. Slowly, reverently, he walked into the darkness, and as slowly the darkness faded into light.

He thought of an old, old song. _Dust from the water, and water arising from dust...........and the robe containing all colours assumed into white.............._

Slowly that darkness resolved itself into a structure Gerylon had only ever seen in ancient, crumbling manuscripts, and in dreams, when he had been training at the Houses of Healing. A low circular parapet, swathed in dusty cobwebs, with a single white marble spout arching from within its arc. He edged forward into the dimness, and saw—as he had never hoped to see with his own eyes—the movement of pale liquid down the curve of the spout.

_It still flows, then. Even now, it still flows._

He swiped away some of the cobwebs and dared to sit down on the low white parapet. Reaching out to the spout, he lifted a drop of the pearly liquid on one fingertip, and sniffed at it. The same bright sharp scent of apples and rain made his head swim. More even than the scent, the realization made him dizzy: _we have found it again, we have found the secret lost to generations, we can thwart death................_

He fumbled in his pouch for a vial and held it to the slow drip of the nacreous fluid. It was heavy, heavier than molten metal, as it dripped into the vial; Gerylon almost had to steady his wrist with his other hand as he held it, much as he and Iriliath had had to hold the silver bowl with both hands, when they had made the Life.

The vial was full; he slipped in the stopper and tucked it away into his bag before rising to his feet and sweeping away the rest of the cobwebs shrouding the spout. No one and nothing had come here for years upon years; the dust lay like soft grey velvet on all the surfaces of the shrine. Softly Gerylon began to chant the spells and incantations that he had only ever seen written in the Old Tongue, the language before the Elves had come to Middle-earth, the language of live magic. The words fell softly into the dimness of the old shrine, and for a while Gerylon was not sure they were having any effect; but he noticed slowly that the darkness was fading, the grey shadows were growing shorter as his words continued, until the whole shrine was lit with a pale white light that grew and grew until it was brighter than day, stranger than day. His words seemed to echo differently, strangely, in the glowing paleness. It almost hurt, even for elven eyes, to look directly at the fount of the Life.

Gerylon edged closer, murmuring the final words of the invocation. As he fell silent, the fountain flared actinic white, too bright to look at even through squinted eyes, and he backed away; when the light died down again, the sharp sweet scent of apples and rain filled the air, and a soft gentle tinkling sound tickled at his ears.

The wellspring of the Life was flowing once more, as it had not done for more than three thousand years. The evil of the thing called Sauron had choked off the wellspring, made it flow softly, sadly, if at all; now the dam was broken, and the flow was steady and eternal, as it should have been these many years.

Gerylon sank to his knees beside the fountain, too weak to move, and just listened to the sound of the flowing pearl as it made its slow voyage from the depths of the earth into the light of day. 

**

Hours later, having ripped away the strangling vines and cut back the branches of the trees threatening to envelop the springhouse, he had turned home again, with his precious burden and more precious knowledge tucked neatly away. Thunder thudded dully in the east. It had threatened to rain all day, and while Gerylon was in favour of rain in general for the sake of the growing things of his forests, he wished it would hold off for just one more night, until he could find the shelter of a rooftree, rather than his cloak, over his head. Elves were generally held to be above such mundane concerns as getting rained on, but Gerylon was, at worst, practical, and he didn't like what it did to his hair, anyway.

The flask of Life felt heavier than it should be in his pack. He had tried shoving it into a saddlebag, but he found himself constantly reaching in there to make sure it had not fallen out. He didn't like having it out of his reach. The awareness of this was beginning to worry him, but the benefits it would bring to the Houses of Healing cut down his anxiety. Once he got back, it would be out of his hands, and out, hopefully, of his mind.

His horse whickered uneasily. Not for the first time Gerylon wished he had let someone accompany him on his journey—Legolas, for preference, with his forester's bow and his ability to shoot something almost without looking at it and while carrying on a conversation without breaking stride. Gerylon was a Healer; he could use a knife, passed through a flame to cleanse it and washed in triple-distilled spirits, and he had considerable knowledge of where to put a blade in order to do the most damage to an opponent, but he didn't have the experience or the skill at self-defense that some of the others did. Not that he was likely to be waylaid on this road—it had not been traveled in years—but nonetheless he was uneasy.

With the ease of practice he cast his mind away from the dim shadows by the road and pointed it at the plans to be made. The wellspring of the Life was flowing again; the custody of the spring should belong to the Elves, by rights, but he doubted that would ring true for Men or Dwarves, or even hobbits; it would take much skill at diplomacy to ensure no one came to blows over such a resource. And the Life itself must be distributed to all the Houses of Healing, to be used only by those who knew what it could do, and what it must not be used to do. Gerylon had a brief vision of a Middle-earth populated by immortal, shambling relics doomed to interminable life by a hasty decision and a drop of white fluid, and shivered. Death came to all, in the end, and it was right to come. The Life only had value when administered to heal, not to immortalize. Even so, he wondered just how long they had given Frodo, with their few drops.

He was riding into the weather. In the distance, over the mountains, the sky was black; he wagered that rain was falling on Rivendell even now, and drew his cloak more tightly round him. No point hanging around until the rain came to meet him. He spurred on, and his tired horse broke into a canter. He was very aware of the hard heaviness of the flask where it sat in the pack hanging from his belt, bumping against his thigh with the horse's stride.

***

Frodo's cough was easing, slowly, and Iriliath had allowed him out of bed. He found himself most at ease in the ancient library, curled in the windowseat with books almost as big as he was, reading about older times and older peoples. It was odd to see Elrond's name, and Arwen's, on the same page as that of Isildur; odd to realize that these people he knew had known the legends personally—_were_ the legends—and that they would be written about for thousands of years after he died. Hobbits were a long-lived race, for mortals, but they were evanescent and fleeting by the standards of the Elves. He wondered briefly what it must be like for Elves to associate with people who would flare up and disappear so fast; was it possible for two such different races to really know one another?

Frodo sighed, coughing, and flipped forward through the pages, past the story of the Rings. He was sick of Rings and Ring-bearers and wars and Sauron. The part of him that was still a respectable Baggins considered such things very far from necessary.

There was a page of illumination, the gold old and dim, the colours faded by time—Frodo thought he recognized the Lady, and some other tall pale figures, and grey trees—and then a new story began. The curly Elvish script was not easy to read, but Frodo seemed to find that his eyes slid over the quill-strokes more and more easily these days, that the words sounded in his head without strain. 

_.......and so it came to pass in the Shadow Time of history, long before the events surrounding the Wars of the Rings, that a wellspring arose from the living rock not far from a place called Liira's Helding; but the water that came from it was not water........._

Frodo squinted. Who cared about some geothermal event? He wondered where Liira's Helding was, and if anyone even knew anymore.

_.....and those who came to it suffering from the grief of a wound, or mortal sickness, drank; and were healed, and went away with lighter hearts......and some were cured who were at the point of death, and some beyond it, though these it was kinder to destroy, for they walked the land as dead men walk, who should lie in the earth._

He read that sentence again, trying to make sure he'd got the difficult Middle High syntax right, and shivered. Dead people walking around.....the Dead Marshes.......strange knockings and tappings in the deep places of the earth....

_And the Men, and Elves, who knew of the spring did call its waters the Life, for it was Life distilled, the pure bright blood of the world, and would make those who drank of it no longer quite mortal. But as with all things, the fount of the Life gave freedom from death, but its gift did not come without a price. Both Elves and Men wished to keep its bounty for themselves, the Elves because they believed in their wisdom that the fount required skilled and learned guardianship, the Men because in their greed they wished never to die....._

Frodo sighed. A nice story, but definitely written by an Elf. He had to agree that something so powerful needed a powerful guardian, but he wasn't entirely sure that the immortal Elves needed sole access to something granting immortality.

_......and the matter came to anger, and then to blows, and then to war; but soon after the races clashed arms over the Life, the wellspring dried up, and sank out of sight, and the shelter they had caused to be built over it was empty and silent once more. It has been said that in a time of great need the Life will flow again, and some Healers have prayed for it, for a draught that grants freedom from death is a dear dream in the hearts of Healers. It is said furthermore that in these dark times, when Sauron sits in Mordor to the east, the Life cannot flow freely; that only with his defeat may we receive its gift once more. The old songs record that the Life is a thick white fluid, like to liquid pearl, and that it is sharply scented, not unlike rain and green apples. Yet it is but a myth, as is the Creation of Khitharas, or the coming of the Dark Ones from the east, with their sticks that spit fire and their machines to fly upon the air. The first telling of the story of the Life is so old that no one remembers when it was recorded......_

Frodo's nerveless fingers let the book slip sideways to the windowseat. _Green apples and rain_......."They said I was dying," he murmured. "I _felt_ myself dying. And......"

_But how could they have used this Life on me? It's a myth. They know it's a myth. The book says so. No one has seen or heard of it for longer than three thousand years....._

But he knew, as somehow he had known since waking up for the first time after that flaming eye had receded from him; he knew that he had been changed subtly, and that nothing would ever be quite the same again.

Coughing, he slid off the windowseat, leaving the book open with its pages fluttering gently in the rain-breeze from the casement, and hurried out of the Library. He had to find....someone. Arwen, or Legolas, or even Sam—but he did not think he wanted to talk to Sam about this, not just yet. 

_So I am not to die yet. Perhaps in a thousand years I will have forgotten Sam, as the Elves will have forgotten us all, unless someone writes these things down in another book, and they pass into myth as well...._

(to be continued)


End file.
